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The first time Merlin thought to himself, I'd really like to kiss him, it took him several moments of processing to realize that, first, he did in fact mean he wanted to kiss Arthur, and second, that he was obviously going completely insane. He proceeded to drop the part of Arthur's armor that he was trying to attach onto Arthur's foot, which caused Arthur to call him all sorts of really unpleasant things, which worked wonders for turning off Merlin's desire.
He wrote that moment off as temporary insanity from too much proximity to Arthur and moved on with his life. Or so he would have liked, except for the fact that his subconscious really, really wanted him to think about this bizarre impulse, and took to invading his dreams to get him to do so.
Which, really, just made Merlin try to spite it, regardless of the fact that that meant, technically, that Merlin was spiting himself.
***
Over time, the impulse to kiss Arthur became one of the many things that Merlin pretended Did Not Exist while in the prince's presence, like his magic, and Arthur's perpetual bedhead, and the fact that most of Morgana's witty rejoinders were, truly, quite witty and Arthur was well out of his depth. Rarely did Merlin give his impulses much notice, other than a quick, Stop that, which he pointedly knew did not make him crazy at all.
So he was actually rather surprised when, in the midst of ignoring all these impulses, he almost did kiss Arthur.
He'd been changing the wrapping on a cut on Arthur's collarbone at the time, an injury received at the hand of some nefarious evil or other, when Arthur had said something uniquely Arthur in that it was both heartwarming and vaguely insulting -- Merlin thought it might have been, "You really are getting startlingly good at this patching-up thing" -- and Merlin had paused in his wrapping to look at Arthur while he was speaking. More precisely, where Arthur was speaking, as Merlin's eyes stopped at Arthur's mouth, and his subconscious chose that moment to attempt a sneak attack. Luckily, Merlin's subconscious was approximately as sneaky as Merlin himself, and Merlin stamped it out before he could actually manage to get himself permanently sacked, or hung, or something.
The end result was that Arthur gave him somewhat strange looks for about a week and Merlin kept himself at all times at least twelve inches away from Arthur's person. Except, of course, when he had to touch Arthur's person, and then he stood as far away as he could, and still retain the motor skill to do whatever was required. Aside from Arthur asking once, "Good Lord, Merlin, do I smell like I've been swimming in dung or something?" it had worked out fairly well.
Unfortunately for Merlin, his subconscious was almost as persistent as a hungry dog. Merlin pretended that that analogy had absolutely no sexual subtext, too.
***
The third time Merlin almost kissed Arthur, he didn't get away quite as unscathed. Arthur had been off doing something half-gallant and half-suicidal while Merlin had been knocked unconscious in a quaint little clearing. When he'd come to, he'd had no idea in which direction Arthur had gone, and been forced to find him by means of a very crude tracking spell. Once he'd found Arthur, just as the prince decapitated an evil thing, he'd been so relieved to see Arthur alive that he'd run up, grabbed Arthur's armor, and shaken him.
As soon as he'd finished shaking Arthur and calling him seven forms of idiot, he'd exclaimed, "I'm just so relieved that I could kiss you, you idiot!" He realized what he'd said about half a second later, when Arthur's eyebrows made pleasant acquaintance with his hairline and the prince took half a step backwards.
Merlin let go of Arthur's armor immediately and took his own step backwards, pausing just short of rambling. Finally, he said, "I mean, er. It's just an expression. That my mom used to use. When I'd, you know. Done something dangerous and idiotic."
Arthur had continued to stare at him with eyebrows raised for several moments, then said, dryly, "Yes, I can see where she'd have had many chances to perfect such a thing." The prince had stood there for a moment longer, looking at Merlin oddly, before looking briefly down and then muttering, "I'm sure my knights are all awake by now, if you managed it." He looked back up for a moment, and his eyebrows had done an about face, now scrunched together in Arthur's version of suspicion. "Though how you found me when none of them obviously have, I am quite sure I don't want to know."
"Uh. Dumb luck?" Merlin guessed, glad the subject had changed from his awkward blunder, but not quite so glad that it had sort of changed to his even less pleasant secret.
"Didn't," Arthur muttered, turning around, "want to know, Merlin. That means don't tell me. Now, come on."
They hadn't spoken about it again. Once he'd had the proper amount of time for the sheer terror of the incident to fade into relative nonexistence, Merlin found himself somewhat disappointed that they hadn't given it any closure.
But, well, Merlin knew he'd really ought to have figured by then that his wishes had a somewhat eerie tendency to come true.
***
The fourth time Merlin almost kissed Arthur, he needed no internal influence to stop himself.
He had been faced with a decision during that particular idiotic adventure: watch Arthur get torn apart by giant, killer birds -- and Merlin could definitely see the irony there -- or risk Arthur not being a complete imbecile and figuring out that Merlin was a sorcerer. Considering Merlin had always believed that Arthur would have to find out sooner or later, and there wouldn't be any sooner or later if Arthur died in the next ten minutes, he chose the latter option and counted his blessings that they were the only ones who had been fool enough to come out here to face the birds.
His power had grown; it was always growing, much like a well that only fell deeper and deeper into the earth to fill with water. Merlin used a spell he had created on the spot to stop the birds in the air, mid-lunge, and then watched as Arthur didn't so much as miss a beat, using his opportunity to decapitate the flock. Releasing the spell sent the dead birds tumbling to the earth, where they promptly burst into flames and disintegrated, giving Merlin a moment to take a deep breath and quickly pray that Arthur was, in fact, that much of am imbecile.
Of course he wasn't; he wouldn't be the man Merlin was willing to follow, if he was. There were, however, moments when it would have been damn useful.
Arthur sheathed his sword, then, still facing away from Merlin, said, "Was that you." Though it was phrased as a question, it was not.
Nevertheless, Merlin answered; he couldn't even convince himself, for a moment, to lie. "Yes."
"I see," Arthur said, voice the solemn baritone he used when greeting and speaking with dignitaries visiting the kingdom. There was a pause, longer than Merlin would have liked, before, "How long?"
If Arthur had questions, Merlin knew he owed it to them both to answer. "Always," he said. He continued, in a softer voice, "Since I was born."
"Is it always evil?" Arthur asked, after another moment of silence.
The question hurt Merlin for the ten seconds it took him to realize that if Arthur believed the answer to that question to be 'yes,' he wouldn't have been asking. It was what he'd been raised to believe; that he was questioning it took some of the invisible pressure off Merlin's chest. He took a deep breath, then let it out. "No," he said, finally. "It's a tool, like any other."
"Are you powerful?" Arthur's voice was lower than it had been, more thoughtful. He was questioning in an almost academic fashion, and Merlin could respect him for it.
He replied, "Yes," steadily. As Arthur's voice lost its authoritative cadence, Merlin could feel the air around them change. He knew that this answer, as frightening as it was, did not startle Arthur.
Though whatever Arthur had hoped to gain from this conversation had been met, he asked one last question, this in a final, absolute tone. "Would you ever use it against me?"
"No," Merlin answered, immediately, but firmly. That Arthur seemed to have known the answer already gave Merlin a sense of peace in place of the fear he had lost that Merlin had not expected. When Arthur made no move to turn or to ask another question, Merlin asked his own question, "What will you do?" Just as Arthur seemed to have known the answer to his own query, Merlin knew the answer to this.
"Nothing," Arthur replied, his voice regained of its normal cadence.
This is the king you will be, Merlin found himself thinking. He watched Arthur's back for a moment, and as he'd accepted his last thought, he accepted that it was this, or at least partly this, that made him love Arthur, both as the Once and Future King and as the boy he was now.
Almost as though he had known Merlin was about to take a step forward, Arthur turned, and stopped Merlin in his tracks. There was a moment that Merlin thought he could see that Arthur had understood his intentions, and then Arthur's expression gained a neutrality that Merlin had not seen in more than a year. "I have to think," Arthur said then, in answer to the question Merlin hadn't asked.
Watching Arthur walk into the woods, Merlin barely even remembered his desire to kiss Arthur, buried as it was under the new realization that he would have to gain Arthur's trust again, this time as the sorcerer Arthur recognized him as.
He'd always wanted Arthur to know; to be seen for what he really was. If his wish was granted, he would have to deal with the repercussions. There was no other choice.
***
The fifth time Merlin almost kissed Arthur, it was in part of an over-emotional reaction to a truly simple thing.
Tiptoeing around Arthur's need to relearn to trust Merlin was nearly as difficult as trying to keep his magic hidden in the first place; Merlin never knew if what he did or said was in violation of some unspoken rule of backward progress. If he said, "Arthur, you can't do that alone," Arthur's silent, stony look would remind him that the casual nature of their relationship was as dependent on trust as the dangerous aspects.
When Merlin said, that day, "Arthur, you can't possibly be thinking of going out alone," referring to the danger that was, well, more a daily thing than anything else, but in this instance specifically was a thousand pound wolf that was terrorizing the outlying villages, he had expected Arthur's response to be of the "I will do what I deem is best" variety.
Instead, Arthur replied, "Don't be an idiot, Merlin. I'm well aware that, no matter what I say, you're going to trail after me, so we might as well make it an efficient sort of trailing, now shouldn't we?" He had grinned, then, in the way that meant, Yes, I am insulting you, but you can't really say anything about it without losing the overall war, so you're just going to have to put up with it.
Merlin met this with what he was sure was a completely idiotic grin, which in turn caused Arthur's smirk to transform into a warmer, more acknowledging thing. He was only able to stop himself from reaching out and pulling Arthur to him by means of his tunic by the lingering intelligence that said that might be pushing a little far, a little soon.
It was a close thing.
***
The sixth time Merlin almost kissed Arthur, it was really only an "almost" because Merlin wasn't sure to whom the credit really belonged. It wasn't particularly romantic, what with the bleeding wolf carcass not six feet away, nor was it particularly comfortable, being as Arthur had turned and knocked Merlin onto the ground almost the exact instant the wolf had died, and Merlin had something he really hoped was a stick poking rather painfully into his lower back.
Not that he was going to complain, since speaking meant that the kissing would have to stop, and that was certainly not going to happen. And that was not going to happen, when he finally had Arthur's trust, with perhaps a bit more, after he'd been waiting for so long for this very thing. He didn't even want to think about how long it was that he'd been wanting to kiss Arthur, either. How long Arthur'd been wanting to kiss him, well, that was another story.